The Hill Top Shop, the main convenience store on the Hill, may undergo a facelift this summer with new floors, ceilings and display areas if a proposed renovation project is approved by campus officials in coming months.
The renovation, which members of the Associated Students UCLA Finance Committee discussed during a meeting Friday, would be the first major change to the store’s appearance since it opened in the early 1990s. ASUCLA estimated that the project will end up costing around $150,000.
Robin Broudy-Johns, operations and outlying stores director at the UCLA Store, said she hopes the renovation will make the products more visible and increase sales at the store, which brought in about $1.1 million last year.
“We really need to do it,” Broudy-Johns said. “We need to get out of the ’90s and into the 21st century.”
Under the proposed renovation, workers would take out the refrigerators and cash register kiosk before replacing the walls and floors and installing a new ceiling with energy-efficient LED lights. The new floors would have a neutral tone, and the store would have a blue and gold color scheme, replacing the green, red and mauve.
Instead of slat walls with hanging racks, the renovated Hill Top Shop would have metallic racks on the walls, which Broudy-Johns said she thinks look more modern.
The metallic racks would have a similar look to those in other outlying ASUCLA stores, such as the UCLA stores in the Court of Sciences Student Center and Lu Valle Commons, said ASUCLA executive director Bob Williams.
The renovation would ideally take place during a four-week period in August because most people on the Hill over the summer are conference attendees instead of students, Broudy-Johns said.
At the Finance Committee meeting Friday, committee members said they supported the project. Undergraduate student representative Carly Calbreath, a fourth-year geography/environmental studies student, said she liked the renovation plans because she is a resident assistant on the Hill and she and her residents go to the shop regularly.
For the renovation to take place, it has to fit the UCLA Housing and ASUCLA budgets and be approved by both the ASUCLA Finance Committee and the organization’s Board of Directors, as well as Housing and Hospitality Services officials, Williams said.
Members of ASUCLA said they plan to meet this week with Peter Angelis, assistant vice chancellor for Housing and Hospitality Services, to discuss the plans.